Temp change's for newbies and a refresher for the forgetful.

[metro_habanos]

Hello all. I know, I know Pig, here I  am again. What can you say. You have a wonderful forum and some of us may need a refresher/course on "The affects the change the cooler season brings along with it. So I guess I'll start this party off. I recently (end of July) started a new hobby; collecting Cuban cigars. So, since then I have purchased approximately 24 box's and cab's. I have them divided in to 2 different containidor's and 3 humidors. I plain on using one for storing / aging the box's that need aging between 6 to 8 years, the other container I will use for the 2 to 5 years. Those containers will be set with 3 of the Boveda 320gram packs @ 69% Rh. The largest humidor was a raffle win, a 400 count Foot Locker type humidor. I will use this for the 1 year aging. Again @ 69%Rh. The other large humidor is a Daniel Marshall 20th Year Treasure chest humidor that I just picked up. This will hold a box or two that come of age within the year and the tray will hold the sticks that are ready now. Again @ 69%Rh. Then the last medium desktop will hold the remainder of the loose sticks that are ready to smoke, 69%Rh. Up until now, with the warm weather, the temp was relatively steady 68 in the am and 70 in the pm. Now that it is getting cooler, I have noticed that the temp spread is 62f in the early am to 70f in the evening.

I am concerned that the rate of temp and fluctuation of 8f within 10 could not be good for the cigars. Wouldn't a more steady temperature be better for overall flavor and health, if you please, of the cigars?

I will thank you in advance fish. I know you couldn't resist.

[shlomo]

Steady is best, but cigars are resilient and if they smoke to your liking, then don't stress.

[clarkvstewart]

Bear in mind that cigar boxes also insulate from change. They’re their own ecosystem. I ran a compressor type winedor for quite a while and even with several huge RH swings during the course of a day you wouldn’t notice it in my smokes tucked away in boxes. High humidity and high temps for a consistent period of time is what you need to watch out for. 70 ain’t high by any means. Also you may want to lower your RH to between 62-65 especially for aging stock. The lower RH really helps with how they burn and smoke. When I ran higher RH I had consistent burn issues and re-lights/uneven burn lines


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sean3]

I concur with Shlomo, an 8 degree fluctuation won't hurt anything...if cigars were so fragile as to be ruined by such a small fluctuation, we'd all be in trouble, with the possible exception being the venerable Mr. Piggy!  Also, many members of the forum including myself, have found that a lower rH (60%-65%) yields better smoking and better tasting cigars.  In my own case, keeping my cigars at 67%-70% rH produced consistently bitter tasting smokes.  Once I acclimatized them at 62%-64%, the bitterness went away and taste improved rather dramatically.  Anyway, that's my 2 cents and everyone has different preferences and tastes...it pays to experiment sometimes.  Oh, should you experiment with a lower rH, it took my cigars about 6 weeks at the new rH level to show improvement, and a bit longer to really reap the benefits.  Hope this helps.  Cheers.

[Smokin Joe]

14 hours ago, Sean3 said:

In my own case, keeping my cigars at 67%-70% rH produced consistently bitter tasting smokes.  Once I acclimatized them at 62%-64%, the bitterness went away and taste improved rather dramatically. 

I had the same experience when I started storing larger numbers of cigars earlier this year. The advice I was given by the B&M who sold my my first humidor was to store at 70rH.  When I dipped in a few months later the cigars I usually enjoyed were bitter and hard to pull. I dropped the rH back to 62 on the advice of FOH regular like Piggy and they were really back I  business.

The constant temperature fluctuations in Melbourne haven't hurt the flavour of my CCs over the past 12 months but I have started a coolador for the boxes I'm aging. Logic being the cooler will warm up and cool down far more slowly.

[stogieluver]

I would be more concerned about the high rH than the temp. 

[PigFish]

Advice on storage, like taste is anecdotal and heuristic. Ultimately I believe in the 'heuristic humidor.' Furthermore, what one thinks is happening, verses what is really happening are often not one and the same. For me, it is always about taste performance. Taste really is all I can judge. Everything else I just measure with the highest resolution equipment that I deem practical.

I suggest one practice the heuristic approach, mentored by some that he or she may trust to have sound advice from those that will have covered the ground before him. It does not make sense to start from scratch, but it does make sense to experience cigars ones-self and derive taste data from that heuristic approach.

Remember, the 'heuristic humidor,' and when someone repeats it elsewhere; you read it here first!!! -LOL

It is true, as mentioned above that cigars are not that sensitive. That is a term that I can find truth and error in. It might be more correct to say that cigars have a slow hysteresis at the temperature that we often store them in. As far as sensitivity, well, they exchange water and heat freely, even in sealed boxes. I can prove this, by the way. The box is a barrier, but not an impervious one. Box protection is an added layer of protection, but if it were sufficient, then we would not need humidors now would we? This is a lesson in the 'heuristic humidor' approach.

Your drop in temperature of 8 to 10F represents somewhere around 1rH per 3F. This is generalized and has been somewhat depicted in a video that I post here often. So the question is, are you happy with that? It has little or nothing to do with me.

The problem arises when one assumes that their observations are factual. Remember, cigars don't typically react immediately. They take some time in a fairly moderate and relatively stable climate. Yet, they do change. They do take the condition of equilibrium PMC... It is the 'law.'

The extremes are 'not to exceed' points. You exceed them and damage is done to the smoking experience and then perhaps the cigars themselves. Again, i am not about testing the extremes of 'what not to do' with a cigar. I test the extremes of ambients and what I can do to continue to keep cigars stable.

If you are talking 62F and around 70rH, we don't have much to talk about. You might find my cigars distasteful, as I certainly would yours. This is far too much water for my taste. Furthermore, if your average is not quite what you think it might be, you may actually find yourself on the cusp of mold growth. Me, I would not risk it. I would store dryer for my taste due to my experience. If your home actually finds itself in a 'dampened' state during these times of low temperature, you may not be able to scavenge the free water from the ambient at a rate determined by your passive elements, and you may generate mold. This is the mentoring part. It could happen. Of course, you can try it for yourself and report back... The choice is yours.

I will leave you with this. Lets say that you take a still picture of your front lawn at a random time during the day, and you find that in the image there is no view of the neighbor's dog. Yet when you come home at night, there is always dog crap on the lawn. The snapshot is only reality for the period that it covers. If you want to find out whose dog is crapping on the lawn you get a video recorder. Snapshots then are good for some purposes but not for all purposes. Correlating data about your humidor will always be done at one level with the taste of your cigars (the heuristic approach). The rest is done with instruments. If you are going to push the envelope on mold growth (low temps and high rH), you should definitely know what your conditions are and how they average.

Cheers! -Piggy

[Eric05]

I am currently experiencing this now. I have an aristocrat humidor. In the beginning my house was around 66 temp wise and holding 64-66 in my box. My temp went up to 68 degrees. And now my box is a consistent 66 throughout. Seems like with the warmer temp its holding better.

[Sean3]

9 hours ago, Smokin Joe said:

I had the same experience when I started storing larger numbers of cigars earlier this year. The advice I was given by the B&M who sold my my first humidor was to store at 70rH.  When I dipped in a few months later the cigars I usually enjoyed were bitter and hard to pull. I dropped the rH back to 62 on the advice of FOH regular like Piggy and they were really back I  business.

The constant temperature fluctuations in Melbourne haven't hurt the flavour of my CCs over the past 12 months but I have started a coolador for the boxes I'm aging. Logic being the cooler will warm up and cool down far more slowly.

Yep... Mr. Piggy, Fugu, and a few others got me straightened around and I reaped the rewards.  I agree about the coolador, the insulation of the cooler should slow the fluctuations to some extent, you could use some remote sensors to verify this.

[metro_habanos]

@PigFish, and everyone else, thank you for the information. It is very much appreciated by this new comer. I already feel the stress over the temp fluctuation leaving my body.      Thanks again.

[Wolfpack]

If you could set a temp anywhere from 62-68 within 3 degrees and RH at 66. What temp would you use?